


Charity Ficlets and Tumblr Drabbles

by QuickedWeen



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Airplanes, Alternate Universe - Hollywood, Awkward Flirting, BUT GOOD, Curses, Golden Age Hollywood, Harry Lottie friendship, Harry's just shootin his shot, Magic, Marine Biologist Harry, Merman Louis, Multi, Rachmaninoff, Stravinsky - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-01-30
Updated: 2019-02-11
Packaged: 2019-10-19 15:02:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 5,431
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17603561
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/QuickedWeen/pseuds/QuickedWeen
Summary: This is where I'm going to post ficlets for Charity as well as collect some of my drabbles previously posted on Tumblr.





	1. The Visitor

**Author's Note:**

  * For [disgruntledkittenface](https://archiveofourown.org/users/disgruntledkittenface/gifts), [crinkle-eyed-boo (KimmieRocks)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/KimmieRocks/gifts), [imiss_mybearents](https://archiveofourown.org/users/imiss_mybearents/gifts), [lululawrence](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lululawrence/gifts).



> Prompt: someone write an au where louis is a mermaid and harry is the nerdy marine biologist he likes to mess with

Dr. Harry Styles rubbed his eyes and started to go through his closing checklist.

Put the binder away. Clean the lab materials. Lock up the cabinet.

As he puttered around the lab on autopilot, he let his mind wander to that morning. Overnight the sonar had triggered on… well… something.

That, in and of itself, was new. Harry worked in a tucked away corner of a forgotten lab on the Pacific Ocean. 

Officially he was in charge of the satellite aquarium lab for the San Diego Zoo. They barely had any aquatic exhibits, but still needed a facility to research saltwater species because a fair amount of their prey for the regular zoo animals came from the ocean and other saltwater environs.

It wasn’t a very glamorous lifestyle for a marine biologist, but Harry loved it. There were a few other people that worked in the small lab with him, and they all loved coming to work every day. The building had large exterior windows and was constructed on stilts so that it could hang out over the ocean which gave them beautiful views of the actual body of water they were studying. Given how little funding they had, he was grateful to not be holed up in a basement somewhere under the hippo lagoon.

Harry’s favorite feature by far, though was the sliver of glass in the floor that divided parts of the lab. Again, it was a feature that was probably an afterthought to the architect, but meant the world to Harry and his team. It seemed silly, but that was why he had gotten into marine biology in the first place; to be immersed in vast mystery of the ocean.

They had gotten a grant to add a sonar sensor on one of their stilts the year before, and it was meant to measure things at long distances in order to help a local dolphin center gather more data. Harry had asked for access to the readings for his own enjoyment rather than anything substantive having to do with their work in the lab.

And it had been acting funny - a blip here, a blip there - things that didn’t follow the patterns of the local dolphin pods. But, as a scientist, Harry was familiar with anomalies. 

Last night’s had definitely been the wildest, though. Harry noticed on the read out that it looked like a dolphin had approached the sonar and just stayed there, sitting in front of it. That would have been weird anyway, but then the dolphin seemed to have talked to it.

That was ridiculous, obviously, dolphins can’t talk. But the something had interfered with the passive sonar’s ability to detect objects.

Harry shook his head and turned back around to put the binder away and lock up the cabinet that was very clearly sitting open.

Wait a second…

He had just done that. Hadn’t he?

Harry froze and began to look around his immediate vicinity as he tried to recall the last few minutes. He was so preoccupied by the readings - had he not heard someone come in behind him? 

The binder was a little damp and there was a barely there puddle of water in front of the cabinet. Harry looked up at the ceiling to see if there was a leak. Which was silly because the ceiling was about twenty feet high and he would never be able to see at such a distance.

He pushed his glasses up his nose and squinted again in vain.

Looking down at the offending binder in his hand, he opened it to stare at the pages as though the log was going to suddenly prove that Harry wasn’t going crazy. He snapped it shut with more force than necessary.

“Niall?” Harry called out, on the off-chance that his Irish counterpart really had snuck in behind him.

“What’s a ‘Niall’?” a new voice asked, startling Harry and making him jump high enough that he was practically in the rafters of said twenty-foot ceiling.

He whipped around towards the direction of the voice and gasped leaning back to grip the lab bench behind him in shock.

There was a man. Well, more concerning, Harry supposed, was the hole in the floor. Apparently one of the glass floor panels had hinges on it and opened up from below. That was news to Harry.

The man’s very bare, very tan, very… glistening torso was inside the opening, and his arms were crossed resting on the floor as though it was the edge of a pool in someone’s backyard, and not  _ the Pacific Ocean _ . 

“Who the hell are you?” Harry breathed out as his chest heaved and the adrenaline coursing through his veins settled.

The man introduced himself with garbled sounds that were nowhere close to English, or any other language Harry knew.

“What?” Harry asked through the fog of his dwindling shock.

“One of the elders in class said it was most like Louis. So that should work,” the man-Louis-shrugged nonchalantly. “Who the  _ hell  _ are you?” Louis asked with a snort and an awkward emphasis on the word ‘hell.’ 

“Harry,” he replied on autopilot. “I just have a quick question,” Harry added as thoughts flew through his brain rapidfire. “Why are you in the ocean?”

Louis pushed back from the edge of the floor and looked down his body as though there was something wrong, but his evaluation must not have yielded anything because he met Harry’s gaze again with confusion. “Well, I live here.”

Harry tried to wrap his head around that. He was a scientist. He had multiple degrees. But none of those saved him from his next question. “Like… in La Jolla?”

Something about this beautiful, impossible man rendered him useless. 

“What’s La Jolla?” Louis asked with even more confusion etched across his brow.

“Sorry, sorry,” Harry scrubbed his hand across his face. “Wow. Okay. Um… I have no idea what to do here. Can you-Do you want to get out of there?” he asked, gesturing to the floor around Louis.

“Sure,” Louis shrugged again as his placed his hands flat on the floor and pushed up until he was seated next to the opening and the scales of his tail came into view.

Holy. Shit.

Harry was definitely dreaming. “You have a tail.”

Louis maneuvered his fins until he was entirely out of the water. “That should fade in a second.”

And indeed it did. The scales on his tail began to disintegrate the longer he was exposed to the air.

“Do you do this often?” Harry asked, curious now.

“All the time,” Louis replied. Suddenly the weird sonar readouts were beginning to make more sense.

Now that his scales had faded, Harry was beginning to realize that Louis didn't exactly wear Calvins under his tail.

Harry stammered as he held his hand up to block his view of Louis’ more private areas.

“You're naked,” he accused as the blush rose on his cheeks. 

“This is how I always am when I'm in here.”

Harry balked. “What do you mean here? In my lab? How often do you walk around naked?”

Louis smirked and cocked his hip, crossing his arms over his chest and making it clear he was willfully ignoring Harry’s sense of modesty. The language of flirtation, it seemed, was universal.

“Like I said, all the time. Is that going to be a problem for you?”


	2. The Human

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Part 2: from Louis' perspective.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For my dear Kim!!!!!

The human was blushing. It was unbearably cute.

In general, Louis loved to watch humans because they were endlessly unpredictable, but also endlessly predictable, which made them fascinating. He came up to the surface every day to shepherd his dolphin pod, but his pod didn’t really need him to watch them. Dolphin herding developed as a profession over the past century as humans began to expand their reach. Now, the waters were filled with man-made dangers and merpeople - being the protectors of all sea creatures that they were - began to watch over dolphin pods.

One day, his pod got a little bit out of control and came closer to a length of shoreline Louis hadn’t really explored before. As they drew near, he could hear a signal, and he wanted to investigate. After he got the pod on their way back out into open waters, he doubled back and found the sonar device.

When he got closer he veered off to the side to avoid as much detection and that was when he saw the weird strip of light down close to the water. It wasn’t surface light, it was much closer and more concentrated than that creating a perfectly straight, thin line. As he approached he reached his hand out, and he breached about six inches of air before he hit something hard and smooth. Glass.

After that day, Louis came back time and time again exploring this odd phenomenon until one day found the panel that had hinges attached, and when he pressed on it, it creaked a little but lifted freely.

He didn’t want to alert anyone to his presence so he lowered it down almost all the way. There were aquarium tanks everywhere, and Louis’ ire immediately rose. All of those creatures, needlessly trapped.

Then he saw the human.

The human’s brow was furrowed as he pressed his face up against a contraption that Louis didn’t recognize with lots of dials and knobs.

Louis admired the curve of his back and the way his toes pointed towards each other a little bit. That’s not what Louis’ did when he went on land and his tail disappeared. Fascinating.

He started watching the human all the time after that. Watched him interact with the fish in what he called “the lab,” watched him interact with his friends, watched him almost fall asleep in his soup once.

Eventually, he learned what to look for to make sure no one was there. That was when he opened the glass panel up all the way and went exploring.

Soon enough he got bolder and started messing with the human’s stuff because the face he made when he was confused was cutest of all his other faces. The biggest rush came the day Louis stole the human’s sandwich out of the cold box where he had put it in the morning when he arrived.

The human muttered to himself a lot and played with his lip before calling out for “Niall.” He did that a lot.

Which was why, earlier that day, Louis finally said something to him. He couldn’t contain his curiosity a second longer.

So, he simply asked what a “Niall” was.

The human - Harry - had not reacted calmly. But as it turned out, even though Louis got a rush out of messing with the human’s stuff, it was nothing compared to _talking_ to the human. This was way more interesting.

And now he knew how to make him blush.

He had no idea how this human could be the same species as the people down on the shoreline that walked around with no clothes on - given that he had such a problem with Louis not covering up.

Louis didn’t mind being uncovered, didn’t really understand what clothes were for anyway. He decided to have some fun.

“Um- uh-” the human stammered and cleared his throat. “No, I mean, I guess it’s not a problem.”

Louis bit down on a smirk. “Glad that’s settled. Maybe you should show me what all this stuff does,” he gestured around the lab.

Harry looked around at all the equipment like he had never seen it before in his life. “All this stuff?”

“I’ve been playing with it for weeks, I should probably know what it is I’m messing with,” Louis sidled up closer to where Harry was still backed up to the lab bench and started ruffling through some papers.

“You’ve been… what?”

Louis danced his fingers along the edge of the counter inching closer and closer to Harry who was starting to blush again. Had he ever really stopped?

“Playing with it,” Louis said as he let his body follow the path his fingers had forged. Harry didn’t back up.

“Playing with the equipment?”

Louis was close enough now that he could feel Harry’s body heat against his cooling skin and their breath intermingled between them.

“Of course,” he teased. “It’s fun.”

Harry’s eyes flicked down a few times to Louis’ lips, then back up to meet his gaze. Louis may not be _very_ practiced interacting with humans, but some things didn’t need to be translated. This human wanted to kiss him.

Louis also wanted to kiss the human. He leaned forward a bit more to see how far he could push Harry.

But, at his core, Louis’ veins sang with siren blood.

Just as Harry’s eyelids began to droop, bitten lips glistening in the brilliant natural sunlight streaming into the lab, Louis darted away to the other side of the bench where the sonar readings were sitting out.

“Did you get my messages?” he asked brightly as he watched Harry blink a few times, confused by the now empty space in front of him.

A smile bloomed on Harry’s face. “I thought that might have been you.”

“I wanted to see what my dolphins were so intrigued by at the shoreline,” Louis said, mixing all the papers up on purpose. He heard Harry snort in response.

“Your dolphins?”

“My dolphins. My pod.”

Louis could see that he had only sparked Harry’s curiosity further. “Do you own them?”

“They can never be owned,” Louis scoffed. “I protect them.”

Harry’s face softened and he tilted his head with a smile. “That’s sweet.” His tone was so admiring and wistful.

Louis, unsure of what to say, shuffled the reports around a bit more before crossing back over to the open glass panel.

The human’s brow furrowed as he bit his lip and started walking over to inspect the glass panel as well. Harry peered over the edge to examine the shallow waters he had seen a million times before.

“Where do you come from?” he asked, warily.

That was exactly what Louis hoped he would ask. He smirked at Harry and watched as the human’s eyes widened with the realization that he had just played right into Louis’ hands.

Louis stepped closer until his toes were curled around the edge of the opening that led back to his home.

“Would you like to find out?”


	3. Everybody's Twisted, Baby

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: Whatever you write your name on is yours.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For Angela the best most supportive friend ever!!

The first time it happened was the morning of Harry’s twenty-first birthday. He and his family were on vacation in Charleston, South Carolina, so the day hadn’t really started like any other. The hotel they were staying in was nice but small. 

He and Gemma were sharing a hotel room, and even though they were completely in vacation mode, their mother was not. She knocked on their door first thing with a balloon, some cards, and some iced coffee for Harry.

He was endeared and grateful, he really was, but he probably would have been more receptive if it had been at nine instead of eight.

Nevertheless, Anne got them both up and moving and ready to face the day.

They all trudged to breakfast at a coffee shop on Meeting Street before continuing down to the Nathaniel Russell House Museum, their first stop of the day.

Harry had really enjoyed the first house museum. And the second. By the third, they had seen the day before he was beginning to get a bit bored.

They arrived, paid their fare, got their assigned tour time, and decided to explore the beautiful gardens behind the house while they waited. Harry and Gemma wandered around pointing out their favorite flowers and plants to each other and taking entirely too many artsy Instagram shots. The tour guide came out to corral them, showed them around the house, same old same old. 

Until Harry got to the gift shop. It was quaint and small, just like everything else he had encountered in Charleston. He picked up a cool silk printed scarf and was in the process of paying for it when he saw a guest book. 

Naturally, he hunched over to sign his name in it. 

_Harry Styles. Boston. 02114._ _hestyles@gmail.com_

The pleasant middle-aged shopkeeper behind the desk smiled at him indulgently. “Let me just pack that up for you,” she said as she plopped his scarf in a large bag. To Harry’s surprise, as soon as she was done, she slammed the guest book closed and began to stuff that in the bag as well.

“Oh, gosh. Um-” Harry had no idea what to do. He had heard of “Southern Hospitality” but this was… weird. “That’s… That’s not mine?” he added as politely as possible.

“Don’t be silly. Of course it is!” The woman’s smile broadened.

Harry looked to Gemma with wide eyes but she was just as confused. Eventually after a few more rounds of arguing, Harry agreed with the woman that it was his, but as the book’s rightful owner, he wanted it to stay there.

He provided his mailing address for when the book was full so she could send it to him.

Shaken by the whole incident, Gemma and Harry tried to explain it to their mom and step-dad, but it was so unexpected that it was almost impossible to truly make them understand.

The thing is, it didn’t stop there. For the rest of the day, it kept happening.

When they took a break from walking and stopped in the Starbucks on King Street, Harry was doodling on Gemma’s coffee cup, wrote his name, and all of a sudden she was pushing it towards him refusing to drink any more.

“Gem! What are you doing?” Harry cried out, alarmed by her behavior.

Gemma looked equally alarmed. “I don’t know! But I know it’s yours.”

Anne hushed them. “What is happening?”

“This is Harry’s coffee,” Gemma said with disbelief lacing her tone.

“Of course it isn’t,” Harry sputtered.

“Of course it is,” Anne agreed simultaneously.

They bickered back and forth and Harry’s entire family ganged up on him, insisting the offending coffee - black with no cream or sugar or syrup or  _ anything _ \- was his.

Harry started to form a theory, and he tested it with Gemma’s toothbrush that night.

He wrote his name on the handle, and the fight started up again, but as soon as he washed his name off she took it back.

Interesting.

For the rest of their vacation, Harry had fun with his newfound skill. He knew there were intense ramifications of something like this, so he would need to be careful out in the real world, but with his family? Yeah, they were toast.

Gemma might have punched him when he wrote his name on the tag inside of the blouse he had always wanted to steal from her. He apologized by cutting the tag out.

All in all they had enjoyed their vacation in Charleston, but eventually they had to go home. The short flight from Charleston to Charlotte was uneventful, and when they got off they had enough time that they could find a bite to eat before making their connecting flight to Boston.

Harry saw him in the gate area.

Louis  _ freaking _ Tomlinson. His coworker Lottie’s hot brother.

Harry choked on his iced tea.

Harry didn’t hide from Louis while they were in the gate area, but he seemed to be surrounded by a bunch of his friends so Harry didn’t want to interrupt.

Their boarding group was called, and Harry had a window seat so he was pretty early in the process. He got settled in his seat and had just put his carry-on on the floor between his feet when he heard Louis’ laugh float down the aisle of the plane.

Harry’s heart started beating faster, and he rubbed his hands on the tops of his thighs. It was ludicrous to think Louis would somehow be sitting next to him. Ridiculous.

His heart stopped when Louis froze in the aisle when he caught sight of Harry.

“Don’t I know you?” he said with a tilt of his head.

Harry cleared his throat. “Yeah, um. I know Lottie.”

Louis’ brow cleared and he smiled. “Right, of course.”

Then, he swung his backpack up into the overhead compartment and sat down with a plop next to Harry.

“Hey,” he said casually.

“Louis, what the hell?” One of his friends was looking at them and holding his hands out.

Louis turned back and said; “This is my seat now, you’re in 22D.”

His friend slapped him and grumbled as he passed by and took his seat three rows behind them.

The next ninety minutes of Harry’s life was absolutely blissful. He was pretty sure he had blacked out in the airport and this was all a dream.

He and Louis spent the entire flight talking, joking. Flirting. 

Gemma was frantically texting him on WhatsApp using the plane’s WiFi and Harry was content to ignore her. Harry’s phone was out - and violently vibrating - on Harry’s tray table, while on Louis’ they were idly playing tic tac toe while they talked.

Louis got quiet for a second before he leaned into Harry’s space. “You should give me your number,” he whispered.

Harry's throat went as dry as the Sahara desert. “Okay.” He looked around for something to write it on, but they had scribbled over every available space on the napkin.

Louis nudged him with his wrist. “Just write it on here,” he said wiggling his arm.

Harry took a deep breath and tried to stay calm as he took Louis’ hand in his and began to write out the digits of his phone number.

He got to the end and started to write his name before he paused. 

Oh, God. He was about to write his name on Louis’ arm, and he had no idea what was going to happen.

Suddenly, the urge to test this weird magic? Curse? Took over him.

He wrote his name out on Louis’ skin. 

The second the pen lifted, Harry’s breath caught and he warily met Louis’ gaze.

Next thing he knew, Louis was practically in his lap kissing him. There were too many limbs and not enough space, so as far as first kisses went it was not the best. But it was still  _ Louis _ .

Harry nudged Louis’ shoulders until he was back safely in his seat, even though he was still nuzzling Harry’s neck. But Harry could  _ not _ think about that right now, he needed to concentrate.

“Oh my God, oh my God,” Harry repeated under his breath as he dunked the ink covered napkin into the melted leftover ice from his cranberry juice. 

Some of the thin napkin stuck to the ice cubes, and everything was covered in blue ink, but Harry roughly lifted Louis’ hand to pry it off his thigh.

“No, no, no stop!” Harry cried out hoarsely. “Wait, Louis!”

“Mmm… why wait?” Louis asked as he leaned back to try and kiss Harry again.

“Consent is-” Harry bit back a moan as Louis’ other hand broke free of Harry’s grip and made it back in the vicinity of his traitorous dick. “Oh.”

He shook himself and struggled to get Louis’ hand back flat on the tray table. He made sure the napkin was damp enough. “No, no. Consent is very important to- Stop,” he pleaded as he roughly began wiping just his name off of Louis’ hand.

As soon as enough of his name was clear, Louis lifted his hands - and lips - off of Harry and sat back in his seat sheepishly. 

“I am so sorry, I don’t know what came over me,” he said.

Harry’s chest was heaving and he needed to will his dick to calm down and forget that he now knew what it felt like to make out with Louis Tomlinson.

“No, no I’m sorry! I never should have done that.”

“Done what?” Louis asked.

Harry bit his tongue for a moment, but he couldn’t help himself and the whole story spilled out.

By the end of it, Louis was cackling. “So that’s what happened? I was ‘yours’?” Harry nodded and apologized again, but Louis’ eyes were glinting with mirth.

The flight attendants came on the speaker and announced they were landing.

“That’s alright, Harold,” Louis shrugged and began to lean in again with a much more sedate feeling until his lips were a hair's breadth away from Harry’s. “I was going to ask you out anyway. Looks like we just skipped a couple steps.”


	4. Ain't Misbehavin'

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt from a [tweet](https://twitter.com/iris__ks/status/1051127561412112384) that reads: "when i feel bad about my social skills i remind myself how one time rachmaninoff decided he was gonna be pals with stravinsky (who'd casually mentioned he liked honey) so he showed up at his house in the middle of the night with an enormous jar of honey and no explanation"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is for Sus who somehow (unsurprisingly) hit a weird intersection of my interests.
> 
> This is loosely Old Hollywood, and loosely based on Rachmaninoff/Stravinsky

_**Los Angeles, 1949** _

 

“You’re insane.” 

Harry had been expecting this sort of reaction. That didn’t mean it didn’t smart. “Thank you, Liam, for your input.”

He stood up from the piano bench and unrolled the sleeves of his button up until they were much more appropriate for polite society. Given that he had been composing for most of the day in this ridiculous heat, the fabric was a tad bit wrinkled. 

Staring at the offending sleeves for a moment trying to will them into flattening out, Harry sighed, before lifting his suspenders back up over his shoulders from where they were draped off his hips.

“You can’t possibly do this,” Liam shook his head and put out his cigarette in the ashtray on Harry’s coffee table. “You don’t even really know the man.”

Harry blinked at him. “We’ve met before. That’s where I got the idea.”

Liam shook his head and pushed himself up. “Precisely. You met him once at a party, and this idea is purely based off of a casual conversation that didn’t mean anything.”

“You aren’t going to talk me out of this,” Harry admonished. He lifted his jacket to put it on, and just… couldn’t. It was too hot. He threw it back over a chair.

Liam slapped his hand over his eyes. “We’re going to get blacklisted and we’re never going to get invited to another party or gig in this town ever again.”

Harry shrugged. “It’s Los Angeles. If anyone finds out, they’ll all forget next week.”

“That doesn’t mean you should go through with it!” Liam cried out as he donned his own jacket. “We’re taking my car, yours is a piece of junk.”

They made it to the ornate entryway of Harry’s apartment where the package was sitting on his front table to make sure he didn’t forget it. When he stopped to pick it up, Liam sighed heavily. Resigned to his fate.

“Alright, let’s go,” Harry said, clapping his agent on the back. “What would I do without you, Liam? You keep me sane. Level-headed.” 

“That is not a compliment,” Liam called out over his shoulder as they descended the spiraling marble stairs out into the late summer twilight.

 

Liam put the top down for their drive up into the Hills, and Harry welcomed the breeze in his hair. It felt like that was the only respite from the dry stillness in the air sometimes. 

When they arrived at the large mansion set back from the dirt road, Harry had to swallow his nerves. 

He had met Louis Tomlinson just once before, and the other composer had made it very clear how he felt about Harry’s music. He wasn’t mean about it but outlined exactly the ways in which Harry’s style varied from his own.

Louis was fierce and passionate in his compositions; they were atonal and daring in a way Harry admired, but could never dream of emulating. He preferred the romanticism of the composers he grew up studying. His personal style was calm and lethargic compared to the adrenaline rush of Tomlinson’s pieces.

That didn’t matter though. What was it they said? Opposites attract?

Harry shuttered away that particular thought. He knew nothing about Louis’ preferences in that area, so he would start with friendship. Surely, Tomlinson could find it in his heart to put their musical differences aside.

This was Harry’s olive branch.

Liam gave him a look that said nothing, yet very explicitly screamed, “You have one last chance.”

Harry rang the doorbell defiantly.

They had to wait for a few moments, but Harry stared resolutely at the door to avoid any more eye contact with Liam.

He probably should have called first. Too late for that now.

Footsteps got closer and closer before the large door cracked open and bathed the stoop in a warm golden light.

“Um. Hello,” Louis greeted them with his lilting English accent that made Harry weak in the knees. “Styles,” he nodded.

“Tomlinson,” Harry replied, sticking his hand out for a handshake. “This is my agent, Liam Payne.”

“Hello,” Louis nodded holding his hand out to Liam next.

Once they finished the greetings, Louis stood in the doorway, unsure how to proceed.

“Well, gentlemen. To what do I owe the pleasure?” He looked at them with a unique mix of wariness and puckish curiosity.

“I’ll be in the car,” Liam said abruptly.

Louis’ brow furrowed as he watched him walk away. “Is he alright?”

Harry ignored his question in favor of handing over his large, yet lightweight parcel. “This is for you.”

Still confused, Louis lifted a corner of the butcher paper that was wrapped around the metal tin. The very large metal tin. Louis must have recognized the distinct red color as soon as it became visible because he began to rip the paper in earnest.

“You… You got me Yorkshire Tea?”

Harry began to ramble as he was wont to do when he was nervous. “Well, a few months ago, we were at the reception downtown, and I overheard you say you missed ‘a good cuppa’ and how you couldn’t find one here and hadn’t been back to England in ages.”

Louis continued to stare at him blankly.

“Anyway, when I was on tour in England recently... I picked this up for you.”

An awkward silence descended. 

“Don’t you live downtown?” Louis asked.

And that was… not the reaction Harry had been expecting. “Yes, I do.”

“So you came all the way up here, after dinner, to hand me the largest tin of Yorkshire tea imaginable?”

Harry listened intently. “Yes. Yes, I did.”

“Did my sister put you up to this?”

Again, Louis subverted how Harry had pictured this conversation going. “No!” Harry rushed to reassure him. “I don’t even know your sister.”

“Huh... Interesting.” Louis let his gaze trail Harry from head to toe sending little shivers along Harry’s skin. Something changed in his demeanor, and suddenly he was leaning up against his doorway. “You’ve come all this way. Would you like to come in for a drink?”

Harry blinked as he tried to keep up with the conversation. “Sure, let me just get Liam.”

Louis reached his hand out to stop him. “I was actually hoping we could do this without him?”

Harry lowered his arm slowly. “Yeah. Alright.”

Louis looked around Harry’s shoulders and waved at Liam where he was still seated in his car. Liam figured it out quicker than Harry did and almost immediately cranked his engine to life and sped off.

“Looks like your evening has freed up,” Louis smirked as he backed up, making it clear that he wanted Harry to come inside.

“Apparently,” Harry answered still in a bit of a daze. He was pretty sure a pack of one hundred black tea bags was going to lead to some very interesting activities.

Almost as soon as the thought crossed his mind he had to take it back.

“I probably should offer you a cup of tea given the circumstances, but I was thinking something a little stronger?” Louis was leading Harry farther into his home but came to a sudden stop.

“Who are you?” A female voice asked from the living room.

“Charlotte, this is Harry. Harry, this is Charlotte. She was just leaving.”

Charlotte clearly did not agree. “Leaving? Are you mad?”

Louis turned around to face her fully. “You have your own home, you know.”

Her lips pursed and her gaze darted back and forth between Harry and Louis for a moment.

“Aren’t you Harry Styles?” she asked.

Harry nodded unsure of the relationship dynamic between the two. “Yes, that’s me.”

Charlotte sighed. “Very well. Goodnight,” she said pointedly to Louis and made a dramatic exit from the room grumbling about fratricide. 

She must be the sister Louis had been referring to earlier.

Louis placed the tin of tea with more care than it deserved on the coffee table in his parlor before turning his full attention on Harry. 

“Now, how about that drink?”


End file.
